«Fuck the uncle, fuck the niece, fuck the evening and, most of all, fuck that fucking giant bird!» Banshee slammed the door open, throwing all the stuff she had gathered from the Frenchman's apartment right on the table. «And fuck ye, Chico!»

«Hey! I distracted her!» he protested, unable to close his ripped-off shirt and with his belt still lost somewhere in Eva's apartment. «and I was able to search the place!»

«If ye think that this one counts as "taking one fer the team" ye're sorely mistaken!» Banshee replied, sitting down after grabbing a bottle of whisky. Vopros took his vodka, and Chico grabbed some tequila he had snatched from the caterer's reserve.

«Calm your tits, would you? Why so mad, loca? We have tons of information now!» even more relaxed than usual, Chico gulped down a good shot of tequila, before lazily taking up an art book.

«Yeah, but no way to navigate them! Look at all this stuff! I grabbed everything I could, but who knows if I grabbed the right stuff?»

«We know music box not in Eva's house, we know they give it away. But I no think they gave it as gift. They say "hidden in plain sight."» Vopros recapped, with a serious tone that changed the rhythm of the whole situation.

«Why hide something in plain sight and not put it in plain sight in your own home?» Chico asked, flipping through the flyers on the table. Banshee tapped her chin with her index finger, as always when she was thinking.

«Because people know that they see something like that in your home, that's it.» Vopros replied, looking inside his bottle as if everything was clearer through vodka. «But they see it at someone else home, they don't connect it with you, they don't look at it.»

«Aye, but if ye give it to a mortal, and it's something ye mustn't open, we know well how this ends.» Banshee chimed in. «And ye give it to a Mage...»

«Nah, if you don't even trust your family with it, imagine trusting someone else in the Order. Not even the fright of the D'Yves name could keep a Mage from opening a Pandora's Box.»

«The question remains, why haven't the D'Yves already opened it?» Vopros muttered.

«Who knows? They're crazy! Besides, you need a Virtue or a Vice to open a Pandora's Box, and the first are sworn never to open them. Getting a Vice to work with you is always a hairy matter. Maybe the D'Yves just haven't struck a good enough deal with anyone, yet.» Chico shrugged.

«A what what?» Banshee asked, mindlessly.

«Virtues and... you know what? Get yourself a book, niña¸ I'm not your tutor!» Chico snapped at the half-assed interests, picking up a document-sized envelope.

«Woah! Shouldn't ye be all chill now?» she replied. But went straight back to serious when she saw Chico's face. «What up?»

He had extracted some papers from the envelope and was looking at them, frowning.

«I saw something in Eva's study. A printed invoice for "an object of great historical value". It was addressed to Justin D'Yves.»

«The big creepy chief of the family?» Vopros asked, his eyes stuck on a flyer.

«Him. Clearly, I thought better to forget anything with that name on, and fast. But you got eso.» Chico put the sheet on the table. It was the print-out of an invoice, from Justin D'Yves, for "an object of great historical value".

And it was addressed to the Boston Historical and Archaeological Museum.

«So, Eva gave something to... her Uncle... Jesus wept, I Mage-raced one of the top-shelf mage bosses?» Banshee did feel something down her spine.

«I think you better if forget you did.» Vopros said.

She nodded.

Chico stomped a hand on the invoice copy, his eyes shining.

«I bet everything that el coso is the music box! A month ago, the invoice's date, is when Eva decided to sell her house, according to her guests.»

«So, she decided to sell her house, and they had to relocate the music box... but clearly, Justin doesn't trust anyone else in his family but her with the music box, so they had to find another place. And he thought that no one would think he'd put an incredibly powerful artifact in a human museum.» Banshee took up, her eyes also shining. «Jesus wept, we did it! We found it!»

«Well, it will take time now. There are a ton of music boxes around the Museum, we'll have to check them all...»

«Not check all.» Vopros finished his exploration of the books and flyers and held up a little brochure. It was a three-folded piece in harmonious white and brown tones, with the logo of the Museum. It looked kind of freshly printed, among all others, and had a nice golden-letters shimmering title: "Wonders of the Romanov's Court: The Tzarina's Music Box Exposition."

Under it, the image of a closed music box that resembled a Russian castle, down to the minute details of the soldiers on the towers, and little delicious flags.

«Why it is always Romanov? We had other Tzars.» grumbled Vopros, while Banshee could barely contain her enthusiasm.

«We need a plan!» she shouted.

«We no need plan. We need magic. We mages. No thieves.» Vopros protested.

«We can't go in on magic only. That's an artifact, remember? Artifacts make fluxes messy!» Banshee replied.

«Ay de mi! You just summarized one of the most interesting mysteries of magic in the words of a kindergarten baby!» Chico wailed.

«Who cares!» she spat «We need a plan, a good one. With just enough magic to let us go cheap on provisions and equipment, but not enough to let someone suspect mages did it. The Chief was clear.»

«We need blueprints. I ask Bratva.» Vopros offered. Both the others didn't look surprised.

«Why would the Bratva have the blueprints to the museum?» Chico asked.

«Museum makes exposition on Russia? Bratva has blueprints. We not only thieves. You don't steal Russian stuff. Not even in America.» and with those words, he sealed his speech. He grabbed his bottle and marched towards the door, clearly aiming towards downstairs, the garage, his own private kingdom even Chico and Banshee weren't allowed to enter.

But Banshee was already grabbing paper and pen, starting to sketch ideas.

Chico sighed.

«You sure we can pull something like this?»

«We're exactly the right people.»

«Common thieves?»

«Heist specialists.» she corrected him.

«Nosotros no somos heist specialists. We're barely minimum-wage mages.»

«This is the attitude that led to the Calisota incident.» Banshee waved her pen menacingly at Chico.

«The Jefe would say incompetence led to the Calisota incident.» Chico replied, unimpressed, standing up from his chair after one last gulp of tequila.

«The Chief, as usual, wasn't there.» Banshee grumbled, and with words closed herself in her usual silence that meant that her mind was all over one problem, and there was not so much space for anything else.

Chico put the tequila back and, keeping his pants up with his hand, exited the apartment.

https://youtu.be/Wa7MpHL3TOc

He got on his pickup and drove towards the Latino zone of the city, on the eastern side.

Over his shoulder, invisible to anyone but him, something was resting, draped like a sleeping fur collar. As soon as the building was in sight, the invisible creature's eyes opened in two red slits. The tiny, sharply-teethed mouth opened in a creepy smile.

«Now we're home, Soballende.» whispered Chico, lovingly, parking his pickup. He didn't even have to lock it: nobody would ever have tried to steal from a priest.

He walked towards the small side door of the anonymous cubic brick building in front of him. It was an old warehouse that the community bought and restored to use it for ceremonies.

There was no need for plaques or outdoors symbols: who needed to know where the Palo Mayombe church was, knew.

Soballende stirred and jumped from Chico's shoulders, as gracious as an actual cat, finding a sweet spot of darkness in one of the corners of the dim neon-lit room. It was impossible to discern his form, even at this state, but Chico looked at him as a pet owner looks at his favorite cat or dog.

The ample room looked, in many ways, something between a chapel and a clandestine Prohibitionist hideout. It had red brick walls, variously ruined by humidity infiltrations from not-so-state-of-the-art drainpipes, and tall white windows closed with tough, wooden shutters.

Various niches had been carved into the walls to accommodate the sacred sticks, and a distant clucking from behind the garden door spoke of a vast chicken coop.

The incredibly shaped Nganga was sitting on the smooth surface of a marble table, a story only Chico knew how and when to tell. The Nfumbe inhabiting the holy vessel was hovering over it, a transparent black-and-whiteish form of an African man, apparently motionless, as if it was asleep. But it was not. Elysials don't sleep, after all. He was in some sort of self-inflicted trance, a way to spend the long hours when nobody needed his guidance with the sacred rites of the church.

«Palero!» a young, respectful voice echoed in the ample room, as the pitter-patter of bare feet resounded on the black tile floor. Chico turned to the black-haired twelve-years-old boy running towards him.

The boy stopped, almost at attention in front of him, his face trying to maintain a serious and professional expression while suppressing the quite evident necessity to hug the tall man in front of him.

«Hola Carlos, que tàl?» Chico greeted him with a fatherly smile.

«Everything all right here, Palero!» said the boy, his black eyes stuck on his priest and mentor. He wore a simple white t-shirt and a pair of jeans, no shoes, as many other young boys of the neighborhood preferred, with the upcoming spring.

«Muy bien mi Ngueyo.» Chico put on his best approving expression. «Is everything ready for the function, tonight?»

«Word is out. I've taken the liberty to prepare everything you'll need. I hope I did it well.»

«I'm certain you did, Carlos, don't worry. And even if you got something wrong, meh, we'll correct it and learn a new thing in the process. All right?» Chico caressed the excited young boy's head. «Now, let's properly prepare for tonight.»